With respect to the highway maintenance of winter roads, I think Mr. Zoe was in the room when I spoke to Mr. Antoine's concerns. I want to point out, the highway operations are somewhere around $20 million in this O and M budget, that $12.5 million or 51 per cent of it is allocated to highway maintenance. I think up until now we've done a reasonable job. And I believe yourself, Mr. Chairman, made some comments yesterday about that.
These are difficult times. You have to make cuts. Somebody has to make a decision about cuts. I made a decision. I've tried to apply equity to the cuts, based upon the percentages of where the budget is and the allocations it's in. I'm going to try my best in the coming months to try to bring it back up to the level that we want. But we're all living in difficult times, and I think most of the honourable Members, as well as Mr. Zoe, understand that.
We're going to evaluate the impact very carefully of the fact that there has been a slight reduction in highway maintenance.
On the question of docks, I would like to correct Mr. Zoe. The majority of docks are not in the west, they're in the eastern Arctic. I don't want to make comparisons, but the reality is the most sophisticated docks are in the west and it's only the last two or three years that there has been a significant shift in trying to provide some marine development for people in the eastern Arctic. Again, done on an equitable basis, I think, and trying to improve the marine infrastructure for people who utilize it like fishermen, hunters, et cetera.
On privatization of engineering services, at this stage I'm quite frankly not in favour of that. I think our engineering division does a bang-up job. Certainly, if you look at our capital projects, rarely, rarely do we lapse money. I think considering the amount of money that we have, we've done a reasonable job. Unless there are some real solid arguments for their inability to deliver in a cost-effective way, I would have a difficult time at this time supporting that. I think it's important that I be frank. Mr. Zoe wouldn't expect me to be anything else.
However, with that said, we're open-ended. The door isn't closed. If there is someone with a proposal who wants to come forward and can demonstrate to us that they can do the job, do it more efficiently, and more importantly do it more cost effectively, we're certainly going to look at it.
On negotiated contracts, I've stated on a number of occasions that it's my intention to continue on with negotiated contracts where the net benefits go to northerners and it can be clearly demonstrated that way. We will continue with that policy, I want to assure Mr. Zoe. But I've also said on a number of occasions, I don't see negotiated contracts as a never-ending thing. At some point, we all have to become competitive and at some point, we all have to gain the expertise necessary to compete in the market place; however, at this time I want to assure him that there will be a continuation of negotiated contracts. Thank you.